Part 9

To-day at the gallery I examined the Dutch school and the Salle des Portraits, and ended as usual with the Tribune. The Salle des Portraits contains a complete collection of the portraits of painters down to the present day. In general their respective countenances are expressive of their characters and style of painting. Poor Harlow's picture, painted by himself, is here.

The Dutch and Flemish painters (in spite of their exquisite pots and pans, and cabbages and carrots, their birch-brooms, in which you can count every twig, and their carpets, in which you can reckon every thread) do not interest me; their landscapes too, however natural, are mere Dutch nature (with some brilliant exceptions), fat cattle, clipped trees, boors, and windmills. Of course I am not speaking of Vandyke, nor of Rubens, he that "in the colours of the rainbow lived," nor of Rembrandt, that king of clouds and shadows; but for mine own part, I would give up all that Mieris, Netscher, Teniers, and Gerard Douw ever produced, for one of Claude's Eden-like creations, or one of Guido's lovely heads--or merely for the pleasure of looking at Titian's Flora once a day, I would give a whole gallery of Dutchmen, if I had them.

In the daughter of Herodias, by Leonardo da Vinci, there is the same eternal face he always paints, but with a peculiar expression--she turns away her head with the air of a fine lady, whose senses are shocked by the sight of blood and death, while her heart remains untouched either by remorse or pity.

His ghastly Medusa made me shudder while it fascinated me, as if in those loathsome snakes, writhing and glittering round the expiring head, and those abhorred and fiendish abominations crawling into life, there still lurked the fabled spell which petrified the beholder. Poor Medusa! was this the guerdon of thy love? and were those the tresses which enslaved the ocean's lord? Methinks that in this wild mythological fiction, in the terrific vengeance which Minerva takes for her profaned temple, and in the undying snakes which for ever hiss round the head of her victim--there is a deep moral, if woman would lay it to her heart.

In Guercino's Endymion, the very mouth is asleep: in his Sybil the very eyes are prophetic, and glance into futurity.

The boyish, but divine St. John, by Raffaelle, did not please me so well as some of his portraits and Madonnas; his Leo the Tenth, for instance, his Julius the Second, or even his Fornarina: and I may observe here, that I admire Titian's taste much more than Raffaelle's, en fait de maitresse. The Fornarina is a mere femme du peuple, a coarse virago, compared to the refined, the exquisite La Manto, in the Pitti Palace. I think the Flora must have been painted from the same lovely model, as far as I can judge from compared recollections, for I have no authority to refer to. The former is the most elegant, and the latter the most poetical female portrait I ever saw. At Titian's Venus in the Tribune, one hardly ventures to look up; it is the perfection of earthly loveliness, as the Venus de' Medici is all ideal--all celestial beauty. In the multiplied copies and engravings of this picture I see every where the bashful sweetness of the countenance, and the tender languid repose of the figure are made coarse, or something worse: degraded, in short, into a character altogether unlike the original.

I say nothing of the Gallery of the Palazzo Pitti; which is not a collection so much as a selection of the most invaluable gems and masterpieces of art. The imagination dazzled and bewildered by excellence can scarcely make a choice--but I think the Madonna Della Seggiola of Raffaelle, Allori's magnificent Judith, Guido's Cleopatra, and Salvator's Catiline, dwell most upon my memory.

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Nov. 24.--After dinner, we drove to the beautiful gardens of the Villa Strozzi, on the Monte Ulivetto, and the evening we spent at the Cocomero, where we saw a detestable opera, capitally acted, and heard the most vile, noisy, unmeaning music, sung to perfection.

Nov. 26.--Yesterday we spent some hours at Morghen's gallery, looking over his engravings; and afterwards examined the bronze gates of the Baptistery, which Michel Angelo used to call the gates of Paradise. We then ascended the Campanile or Belfry Tower to see the view from its summit. Florence lay at our feet, diminished to a model of itself, with its walls and gates, its streets and bridges, palaces and churches, all and each distinctly visible; and beyond, the Val d'Arno with its amphitheatre of hills, its villas, and its vineyards--classical Fesole, with its ruined castle, and Monte Ulivetto, with its diadem of cypresses; luxuriant nature and graceful art, blending into one glorious picture, which no smoky vapours, no damp exhalations, blotted and discoloured; but all was serenely bright and fair, gay with moving life, and rich with redundant fertility.

"O dell' Etruria gran Citta Reina, D'arti e di studj e di grand' or feconda; Cui tra quanto il sol guarda, e 'l mar circonda, Ogn' altra in pregio di belta s' inchina: Monti superbi, la cui fronte alpina Fa di se contra i venti argine e sponda: Valli beate, per cui d'onda in onda L'Arno con passo signoril cammina: Bei soggiorni ove par ch' abbiansi eletto Le grazie il seggio, e, come in suo confine, Sia di natura il bel tutto ristretto, &c."

Filicaja will be pardoned for his hyperboles by all who remember that he was himself a Florentine.

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28.--"Corinne" I find is a fashionable vade mecum for sentimental travellers in Italy; and that I too might be a la mode, I brought it from Molini's to-day, with the intention of reading on the spot, those admirable and affecting passages which relate to Florence; but when I began to cut the leaves, a kind of terror seized me, and I threw it down, resolved not to open it again. I know myself weak--I feel myself unhappy; and to find my own feelings reflected from the pages of a book, in language too deeply and eloquently true, is not good for me. I want no helps to admiration, nor need I kindle my enthusiasm at the torch of another's mind. I can suffer enough, feel enough, think enough, without this.

Not being well, I spent a long morning at home, and then strayed into the church of the Santo Spirito, which is near our hotel. There is in this church a fine copy of Michel Angelo's Pieta, which a monk, whom I met in the church, insisted was the original. But I believe the originalissimo group is at Rome. There are also two fine pictures, a marriage of the Virgin, in a very sweet Guido-like style, and the woman taken in adultery. This church is the richest in paintings I have seen here. I remarked a picture of the Virgin said to be possessed of miraculous powers; and that part of it visible, is not destitute of merit as a painting; but some of her grateful devotees, having decorated her with a real blue silk gown, spangled with tinsel stars, and two or three crowns, one above another, of gilt foil, the effect is the oddest imaginable. As I was sitting upon a marble step, philosophizing to myself, and wondering at what seemed to me such senseless bad taste, such pitiable and ridiculous superstition, there came up a poor woman leading by the hand a pale and delicate boy, about four years old. She prostrated herself before the picture, while the child knelt beside her, and prayed for some time with fervour; she then lifted him up, and the mother and child kissed the picture alternately with great devotion; then making him kneel down and clasp his little hands, she began to teach him an Ave Maria, repeating it word for word, slowly and distinctly, so that I got it by heart too. Having finished their devotions, the mother put into the child's hands a piece of money, which she directed him to drop into a box, inscribed, "per i poveri vergognosi"--"for the bashful poor;" they then went their way. I was an unperceived witness of this little scene, which strongly affected me: the simple piety of this poor woman, though mistaken in its object, appeared to me respectable; and the Virgin, in her sky-blue brocade and her gilt tiara, no longer an object to ridicule. I returned home rejoicing in kinder, gentler, happier thoughts; for though I may wish these poor people a purer worship, yet, as Wordsworth says somewhere, far better than I could express it--

"Rather would I instantly decline To the traditionary sympathies Of a most rustic ignorance,-- This rather would I do, than see and hear The repetitions wearisome of sense Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place."

The Ave Maria which I learnt, or rather stole from my poor woman, pleases me by its simplicity.

AVE MARIA.

Dio ti salvi, O Maria, piena di grazia! Il Signore e teco! tu sei benedetta fra le donne, e benedetto e il frutto del tuo seno, GESU! Santa Maria! madre di Dio! Prega per noi peccatori, adesso, e nell 'ora della nostra morte! e cosi sia.

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Sunday.--Attended divine service at the English ambassador's, in the morning, and in the evening, not being well enough to go to the Cascine, I remained at home. I sat down at the window and read Foscolo's beautiful poem, "I sepoleri:" the subject of my book, and the sight of Alfieri's house meeting my eye whenever I looked up, inspired the idea of visiting the Santa Croce again, and I ventured out unattended. The streets, and particularly the Lung' Arno, were crowded with gay people in their holiday costumes. Not even our Hyde Park, on a summer Sunday, ever presented a more lively spectacle or a better dressed mob. I was often tempted to turn back rather than encounter this moving multitude; but at length I found my way to the Santa Croce, which presented a very different scene. The service was over; and a few persons were walking up and down the aisles, or kneeling at different altars. In a chapel on the other side of the cloisters, they were chanting the Via Crucis; and the blended voices swelled and floated round, then died away, then rose again, and at length sunk into silence. The evening was closing fast, the shadows of the heavy pillars grew darker and darker, the tapers round the high altar twinkled in the distance like dots of light, and the tombs of Michel Angelo, of Galileo, of Machiavelli, and Alfieri, were projected from the deep shadow in indistinct formless masses: but I needed not to see them to image them before me; for with each and all my fancy was familiar. I spent about an hour walking up and down--abandoned to thoughts which were melancholy, but not bitter. All memory, all feeling, all grief, all pain were swallowed up in the sublime tranquillity which was within me and around me. How could I think of myself, and of the sorrow which swells at my impatient heart, while all of genius that could die, was sleeping round me; and the spirits of the glorious dead--they who rose above their fellow men by the might of intellect--whose aim was excellence, the noble end "that made ambition virtue," were, or seemed to me, present?--and if those tombs could have opened their ponderous and marble jaws, what histories of sufferings and persecution, wrongs and wretchedness, might they not reveal! Galileo--

"chi vide Sotto l'etereo padiglion rotarsi Piu mondi, e il sole iradiarli immoto."

pining in the dungeons of the inquisition; Machiavelli,

"quel grande, Che temprando lo scettro a'regnatori, Gil allor ne sfronda----"

tortured and proscribed; Michel Angelo, persecuted by envy; and Alfieri perpetually torn, as he describes himself, by two furies--"Ira e Malinconia"--

"La mente e il cor in perpetua lite."

But they fulfilled their destinies: inexorable Fate will be avenged upon the favourites of Heaven and nature. I can remember but one instance in which the greatly gifted spirit was not also the conspicuously wretched mortal--our own divine Shakspeare--and of him we know but little.

In some books of travels I have met with, Boccaccio, Aretino, and Guicciardini, are mentioned among the illustrious dead of the Santa Croce. The second, if his biographers say true, was a wretch, whose ashes ought to have been scattered in the air. He was buried I believe at Venice--or no matter where. Boccaccio's tomb is, or was, at Certaldo; and Guicciardini's--I forget the name of the church honoured by his remains--but it is not the Santa Croce.